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Chapter 6

Letters of Recommendation

At some point in the screening process for nearly every job, and frequently as part of your initial application, you will be asked to ensure that letters supporting your candidacy reach the hiring department. The number requested varies, but three is typical. Since letters require the cooperation of others, allow yourself plenty of time to obtain them.

Choosing Your Recommenders and Asking for Letters

The choice of recommenders is important and merits careful thought. Your dissertation advisor, if you are currently a graduate student, or your postdoctoral mentor, if you are a postdoc, will likely be your primary letter writer. Other letter writers might be members of your dissertation committee, current collaborators, or anyone else who can talk in detail about your potential as a faculty member. Most of your letters will probably be from your own department or institution, but it is also acceptable, and even advantageous, to ask for letters from scholars outside your institution, if they are very familiar with your work. The most effective letters of recommendation reinforce what you say about your own research and teaching, making your own statements stronger and more credible.

Of course it is helpful to have a letter from someone who is widely known in your field, but do not ask people to write on your behalf unless they really know your work. If you are applying for postdocs or for positions at top research institutions, letters will speak primarily to your strength as a researcher.

If you are applying for jobs that emphasize teaching, you will probably see some ads that require “evidence of excellence in teaching.” Faculty generally agree that letters from students you have taught are not convincing on their own, though these may be a useful component of your teaching portfolio. One way to respond to this type of request is to ask the recommender who knows your teaching best to write a letter addressing your teaching. Give this person copies of student evaluations of your teaching, if you have them. He or she can incorporate overall numerical standings (perhaps giving a context for them, such as departmental and school average scores), quotes from students’ comments, and his or her own assessment based on first-hand observation.

In some professional fields, such as business and architecture, a letter from a former employer or consulting client may be helpful, especially for a school that values interaction with practitioners.

Ask for letters as far in advance as possible. Faculty members receive many requests for them. Phrase your request in such a way that if someone does not feel comfortable writing for you, he or she can gracefully decline. A tactful approach might be, “I’d appreciate a recommendation from you if you feel you know my work well enough to recommend me.” If there is someone who must serve as a recommender, such as an advisor, about whose opinion of your work you are in doubt, you may want to ask that person to discuss with you frankly the types of positions for which he or she can enthusiastically support your candidacy.

While you should never take for granted that someone will recommend you with enthusiasm, do not feel you are imposing on faculty by asking them to be recommenders. At most institutions, the success of its students in the job market is one of the ways by which a graduate department is evaluated, and advisors with highly successful students enhance their own reputations. Therefore, when someone can honestly write a strong recommendation for you, it is in that person’s interest to do so.

Discuss your plans with those who agree to write for you. Recommendations are most effective when they describe you as well suited to a particular goal. If appropriate, remind the person who will recommend you of your work and experience. Provide him or her with your CV, a copy of a paper you wrote, a dissertation chapter, a statement of your research goals, or anything else that would be helpful.

Sometimes, students or postdocs are asked by a faculty member to draft their own letters of recommendation. This practice can be very daunting for graduate students and postdocs, not only because it is difficult to write a letter on your own behalf, but also because it is an ethically questionable situation. How you might approach this situation will vary. You will likely draft text about yourself, which will explain in detail how you have worked with this faculty member and provide specific information about what makes your research and teaching strong. Though we wish this situation would never happen, it is relatively common. Consider it an exercise in improving your relationship management skills. Depending on the politics of your committee, you may also seek the counsel of other faculty members who are doing more to support your job search.

Using your Recommenders Strategically

As a job candidate, it is your responsibility to keep your committee members—and other supportive faculty—current on the progress of your job search. As positions in your field are posted, you will want to make note of them and schedule appointments to speak with your recommenders about these opportunities. You might even provide them with a spreadsheet of the opportunities to which you will be applying, making mention of deadlines and the salient points of each job description.

In many disciplines, it is common for a faculty member to write a one-size-fits-all letter of recommendation that is sent out to all the schools to which you apply. Though this approach has certainly worked for many candidates over the years, you may find it useful to ask recommenders to tailor a given letter to the culture of a particular program or school. This may not be possible if you find yourself applying to every posted position in your field. You may find, however, that there are a handful of opportunities among these for which you would like to make this request.

Often a search committee, seeking what they feel will be a more candid evaluation, will contact one or more of your recommenders. This is particularly likely to be the case when the recommender is known to someone at the hiring institution. Since letters of recommendation are almost uniformly positive, a spontaneous enthusiastic response to a potential employer is very helpful to you. On the other hand, if the person who is contacted is totally surprised, it probably will not help your case. Such impromptu calls or emails are another very good reason to keep recommenders apprised of every step of your job search. You can ask them to reassure those who call about any aspects of your candidacy that you believe schools may find problematic. For example, if you are married to someone who is genuinely willing to move to the location where you take a job, your recommender can reinforce your statement that this is true if an employer raises the subject. (While such inquiries about your personal circumstances on the part of an employer are not legal, they certainly can occur.)

Also be aware that people whose names you have not given as recommenders may be called or emailed “off the record” by someone on a search committee. This is particularly likely to be the case if you have obviously worked closely with someone well known to a person in the hiring department. So if there is someone with whom you’ve worked closely whose name you are not giving as a reference, pay as much attention to that relationship as you do to those with your official recommenders.

Handling Negative Evaluations

Unfortunately, sometimes the difficult situation arises in which someone who would normally be expected to be supportive of your job search, such as an advisor, is not. Perhaps he or she is disappointed by the goals you have set, or believes they are unrealistic. Perhaps he or she genuinely does not believe you are as strong as other advisees in the past and does not want to compromise a reputation by giving you a recommendation stronger than he or she believes you deserve. Perhaps the person is retaliating for your resistance to some form of harassment. Perhaps you are merely the victim of hostility generated in another area of the person’s life. Whatever the cause, this situation is always difficult. Most likely you hear of it second hand from someone else who mentions to you what has been said in a letter or conversation.

Perhaps you feel (rightly or wrongly) that, where you might expect to find support, you are encountering an obstacle. Several approaches are available to you, none totally risk-free, but all, on balance, more likely to be productive than is suffering in silence. And remember, you are not the first person to whom this has happened. Over the years, we have spoken to many job seekers who’ve had complicated relationships with advisors and committee members. You can move past this to success on your own terms.

Direct Conversation

If you are dealing with a reasonable person who honestly does not think highly of your abilities, at least in relation to the arena in which you have chosen to compete, direct conversation may be productive. For example, you might begin by saying, “I know that you think I’m overreaching in some of my applications. Could you give me examples of institutions for which you could honestly be supportive of my candidacy?” It is helpful for you to remind yourself that no one has an obligation to recommend a candidate against his or her better judgment. Even if the person’s assessment of you is incorrect, he or she does have the right to an opinion.

Advice

If the person you are dealing with has been unreasonable, and you’ve used avoidance as your strategy for dealing with him or her, now is a time to find a knowledgeable person from whom to ask advice. Resources are probably available on your campus to help you. In choosing someone in whom to confide, consider that person’s judgment, experience, and willingness to keep your communication confidential. Individuals outside your department may be particularly helpful in the latter regard. Counselors in university counseling offices and career centers have a professional obligation to keep conversations confidential in most circumstances. So do campus ombudspersons, diversity officers, and staff members of other organizations, such as women’s centers or LGBTQ centers, chartered to protect the interests of members of a particular group.

While such professionals may make a good sounding board, they are unlikely to know enough about the personalities of people in your department to give you very specific advice. Another faculty member in the department is in the best position to suggest how you may strengthen your position with whoever is obstructing your search or, on occasion, to intervene tactfully. Also consider your dean’s office. Frequently, institutions are structured so that there is an administrator, such as an associate dean, responsible for graduate education. This person can be of great help when a student has a real problem with an advisor. He or she will know the personalities of the people in the department and the standards and dynamics of the school, and may be helpful if he or she also has a reputation for keeping conversations in confidence.

Intervention

The best antidote to a negative or lukewarm evaluation is a positive one. Those who strongly support your candidacy can write particularly enthusiastic letters or make phone calls on your behalf. Conceivably they can, if willing, suggest to hiring institutions that one of your key recommenders is misjudging you. However, be extremely careful about an offer to do this on your behalf. Often any attempt to contradict criticism merely strengthens the hiring committee’s impression that there must be something behind the controversy.

It is usually safer for your advocates merely to express enthusiasm for your candidacy, leaving employers free to form their own conclusions. Recommendations from those outside your department who know your work can be particularly helpful in this regard, as they obviously represent a different perspective.

Sending Letters of Recommendation

In the past, dean’s offices or career services offices kept students’ letters of recommendation on file in perpetuum and sent them out on their behalf. These were often called “credentials services.” Given the complexities of sending and storing files in a digital era, as well as the staff time involved, most universities now use services such as Interfolio or Vitae, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s career hub, to manage this process. You should inquire at your institution and in your department as to which service is most useful to students there. Some universities are even able to offer discounts on these services for students and recent alumni—particularly important as sending out recommendations and other application materials can cost job candidates a fair amount of money.

Though it is always better to send updated letters, you will want to have a mechanism for keeping your letters of recommendation accessible and on file for some time. Faculty members go on sabbatical, get sick, or move to new institutions and may not be available to write letters for future job searches. Saving your own copy is not enough. Though federal law gives you the option of maintaining nonconfidential letters (that is, letters to which you have access) as part of any credentials file, these letters are not considered as credible as confidential ones. Institutions will want to receive letters written about you that you have not read.

Choosing the Recommendations to Send with an Application

Strengthen your presentation for a job by sending recommendations selectively. Even if your file contains many recommendations, do not send them all. Three or four strong letters are usually all you need. You may choose different subsets of recommendations depending on the job’s requirements.

Applicants often wonder whether it is wrong to send more letters of recommendation than asked for in a job announcement. Generally speaking, it is advisable to respond only with the materials asked for in the announcement. However, if you have four letters that you believe give a nuanced portrait of you as a candidate and the job announcement only asked for three, you might send your four letters, nonetheless.

Though the practice may seem somewhat old-fashioned, letters of recommendation remain integral to the academic search process. Choosing your recommenders with care is important to your success. Select those who are truly your advocates, who support your work, who can speak about you thoughtfully and enthusiastically, and who are prepared to discuss your work in some detail. If at some point in your career, you are up for tenure, similar letters about your work will likely be solicited from scholars in your field. Thus, building these types of relationships is a skill that will serve you throughout your career.